(3)
It's getting dark so quickly, I need to stay here tonight. Snir drives me to Kibbutz, then falls into thinking. I tell him that there's a security guard here, and the place is secure enough. It won't be a problem for just staying 1 night. "Have you eaten something?"He asks me, I say "No", then he falls into thinking again. It seems that leaving me here is his sin. Finally he has a good idea.
I though it would be easy to hitch-hike in a country, where people love traveling so much, like Israel, but I was wrong. For 4 among 5 cars, I need to spend more than 1 hour waiting for each one. It takes me 7 hours to travel less than 100 km. It might because of the tensity between Israel and Palestine, Israel and Arabic countries. Don't mention that I have a huge backpack which is pretty much enough for a nuclear bomb.
We stop at the back of restaurants. Snir shows me a line of trees and says that it's safe to camp behind the trees. There're security guards who would be around all the night. He gives me his card and writes down his number on it, telling me that he is somebody in this area. If the police comes, just call him. I get off the car, having a great supper in a restaurant, chatting with pretty waitresses, surfing the web for a while, and then burrow into my tent with a dusty body. It's kind of mixture feeling of luxury and frugality.
The next day, a farmer drives me to the border. I'm stopped by another pretty officer. She tells me that I need to be in a vehicle to pass the checkpoint. Luckily a Israeli Arab couple takes me and even give me a ride to Jenin. Everything after the checkpoint is totally different from before it. The pavements and houses are much worse than the ones in Israel. Those houses on the hill look like being pushed up to there, in a way which is not supposed to be. That's the Palestinian refugee camps. Although concrete now, they were made by woods and rocks at the beginning, while 15 people had to shared 2 rooms inside.
Jenin is a small, market-like, quite and peaceful town, which is surrounded by refugee camps and settlements. Unbelievably I fall into a nap while sitting on the hills and listening to the prayers from mosques, until a gracious grandma comes to me and gives me some tangerines. I'm surprised to know that Jenin is an extreme dangerous place to the Israeli government. While leaving Israel, if the custom knows that you had been to Jenin, you would be separated to another room and checked from hairs to toes, as you are a terrorist. Therefore, for not being bothered so much, you could say that you had been to Jerusalem(part of which are Palestine settlements) or Ramallah(where the Palestinian government is).
Just like the Sudanese, Palestinians are polite and modest. Moreover, they are generous and very welcoming. They like inviting me a coffee, cookies or meals. What I enjoy the most here is drinking coffee with them in the chilly wind, and talking about what had happened on this land.
This hair style is very popular here. They have hundreds type of faces, Russian-like, German-like, Arab-like and even Chinese-like. On TV the suicidal bombers usually have full beard, but full beard is not a fashion here. They used to say that they have full beard just because they don't have money to go to salons, it's time to pick some garbage for recycling.
They smoke but they don't drink. The interactions between men and women looks more conservative than Sudanese. Single men and women are not allowed to walk together. Some parents even don't allow their children to meet other children with different gender. If you see a man and a woman walking side by side, they must be husband and wife. Jenin is a small place. If you walk with someone who is not your partner, then you would be dead, I mean DEAD. Couples of months ago, a Jewish volunteer made some problems with a Palestinian woman, and was killed by her relatives. It's definitely not because he is a Jew.
I try to feel the smells of all the chaos, killings and cryings happening here with all my soul, when I'm walking on the street. This extreme dangerous place, suicidal bomber factory, is one of the safest place I've ever visited. I would not bother anybody, would not be afraid of walking alone in the dark, would not wonder if they want my money or not, even would not worry about hunger, as they always invite me food and drink). People like to talk to me, no matter if they speak English or not. They like to show me the old houses, invite me to their home, buy me a coffee and ask me to visit them again tomorrow. Children like to ask me a lot of questions which I totally can't understand. This is the real Palestine, the Palestine that we can't know from the media.
There're thousands of these kind, warm and welcoming Palestinians dying of war and suicide. It hurts when I'm thinking about it. Also there're thousands of Jews dying of the assassinate from Palestinians. I'm getting closer and closer to how they become terrorists, and completely, hopelessly have no possible solutions about it. I want to write what is happening, what had happened here down as much as I can. These stories might not be great, but they're important; to those whom were born in a complete country, whom was easily controlled by those politicians; to the "humanity" and "human mind" that we always want to know more about, These stories are important.
The Palestinian flag is still under custody. I hope one day I could see it flying freely in the wind. Then I would come back here, drinking coffee with them and talking about what had happened on this land these years.
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